Automated machinery for packaging articles in a continuous, multistage packaging operation are widely known. Articles which are subject to being packaged using this type of machinery include beverage containers, such as cans and glass and plastic bottles. Although such beverage containers are especially amenable to being packaged in such an operation, many other types of consumer goods also can be packaged using these automated machines. Packaging machines ordinarily include devices which perform a variety of distinct operations or steps in succession and in a continuous, high speed manner. It is not unusual for beverage container packaging machines to package over 1,000 containers per minute in uninterrupted flow. The distinct process steps of known packaging machines include forming a group of articles of a predetermined configuration and delivering the article group into an open carton. The formation of the article groups normally include conveying articles along discrete, parallel lanes disposed at an angle to a selection area, and selecting a predetermined number of articles from the lane by a selector wedge or metering bar. The selectors can be carried by a movable conveyor, and select the predetermined number of articles, effect arrangement of the articles in the predetermined configuration, and convey the articles to the next process step, for example, for the delivery of the articles into the carton. U.S. Pat. No. 3,778,959 to Langen et al. illustrates such a selection apparatus and method. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,887,414 to Arena and U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,806 to Ziegler et al. also disclose methods and apparatuses for forming preconfigured bottle groups in this fashion. Each of these references also teaches methods and apparatuses for loading the articles into open cartons. Therefore, the steps of forming article groups of predetermined configuration, conveying the article groups along a path of travel on a moving conveyor, and delivering the formed article group into a carton generally are well known.
The packaging operations can include the process step of inserting separate partitions, or article separators, within an article group prior to that article group's being inserted into a carton or carrier. This process step typically is after the article group is formed, but prior to inserting the article group into the carton. In the case of beverage containers, such as bottles, partitions comprised of paperboard panels have been used to separate juxtaposed bottles, primarily to keep the bottles from impacting on one another during shipment. This was especially necessary in the past, when the cartons, typically paperboard carriers, holding the bottle group were not designed to effectively stabilize the bottles, allowing the bottles to shift and move during shipment and other handling operations. Over the years, carton designs improved, providing for less bottle movement during shipping, using other features which were intended to decrease the likelihood of bottle breakage. These features included various types and locations of tabs extending inwardly from the carton side panels to assist in stabilizing the bottles.
Many other types of cartons, however, neither provide internal stabilizing mechanisms nor control article movement sufficiently to avoid the need for separate partitions, those formed separately from the carton, to be placed within the article group and between the bottles. Additionally, in other instances it is desirable to have such separate partitions even when the container is designed to control article movement to some extent. Some bottlers and insurance carriers, for example, often require that breakable articles be separated by partitions, for the shipment of those articles to be within the terms of contract.
Adding to the need to position separate partitions within such containers in some cases is the recent commercialization of processes for manufacturing beverage containers of lighter weight glass. The commercialization of these lighter weight bottles has presented the packaging industry and the packaging machine manufacturing industry with the renewed problem of container breakage, which many believed had been successfully addressed by prior developments in carton designs. In other words, these developments in bottle designs, together with commercial shipping regulations and contracts, have again focused the relevant industries' attentions on the need to separate breakable articles with partitions which are formed separately from the carton.
As a result of separate partitions being utilized to some degree in the prior art, it has become known that as a packaging process step, it is desirable to separate the articles from contact with one another prior to insertion of the partition into an article group. This is necessitated for many reasons, including the need to allow the partition to be fully and readily inserted between adjacent bottles to ensure that the partition is properly inserted before the next process step, which typically is the loading of the article group into a carton, and to prevent the insertion of the partition from impacting, interfering with or tearing article labels.
Prior art machines commonly carried out the process step of inserting separate partitions into, for example, a bottle group, by first separating the bottles within the group using separating and drive lugs carried by chain conveyors. In this system, two rows of bottles are fed onto an immovable table, or deadplate. The bottles then are separately engaged at their lower edges by horizontally extending lugs mounted to drive chains, which are positioned along either side of the deadplate. The lugs are adjacent to each bottle, and serve not only to push the bottle along the deadplate, but also to separate the bottles from one another in the longitudinal direction of the conveyor. A bottle divider which is centeredly disposed and longitudinally aligned with the deadplate, extending about an inch above the surface of the deadplate, separates the adjacent bottles from one another, transversely. In these prior art machines, therefore, two rows of bottles, separated from one another longitudinally and transversely, were conveyed below a partition inserter, which inserted a separate partition between groups of bottles, to define and separate, for example, six bottles for a six pack configuration. Once the partition was inserted in these article groups, the bottles then were delivered to a station of the packaging machine which either grouped the bottles more closely together in preparation for the delivery of the entire bottle group to a carton, or performed these latter steps of grouping and delivery simultaneously.
Although this type of prior art machine performed satisfactorily, it necessarily included the drawbacks of complexity caused by the requirement of the lugs and the chain conveyors used along with the deadplate. Further, the bottles being conveyed in an upright position by this conveyor were unstable because of the lug and centrally disposed divider positions, which necessarily had to be very low to allow the partition to drop into its proper position. Additionally, while article groups of various configurations were possible, this machine typically would permit the formation of a six pack configuration, unless the machine included two separate conveyors of this type arranged on either side of the packaging machine to allow two, six bottle article groups to be loaded into either side of a carton disposed between the bottle groups. While such machines performed satisfactorily within the limitations specified, they tended to be large, and consequently required extensive floor space because of the separate conveyor design. Further, these prior machines mostly were designed to process and to package only one type of article, having a specific size and height.